The present invention relates generally to management of information or sets of data (i.e., "data sets") stored on electronic devices and, more particularly, to a system implementing methods for maintaining synchronization of disparate data sets among a variety of such devices, particularly synchronizing three or more devices at a time.
With each passing day, there is ever increasing interest in providing synchronization solutions for connected information appliances. Here, the general environment includes "appliances" in the form of electronic devices such as cellular phones, pagers, hand-held devices (e.g., PalmPilot.TM. and Windows.TM. CE devices), as well as desktop computers and the emerging "NC" device (i.e., a "network computer" running, for example, a Java virtual machine or a browser).
As the use of information appliances is ever growing, often users will have their data in more than one device, or in more than one desktop application. Consider, for instance, a user who has his or her appointments on a desktop PC (personal computer) but also has a battery-powered, hand-held device for use in the field. What the user really wants is for the information of each device to remain synchronized with all other devices in a convenient, transparent manner. Still further, the desktop PC is typically connected to a server computer, which stores information for the user. The user would of course like the information on the server computer to participate in the synchronization, so that the server also remains synchronized.
A particular problem exists as to how one integrates disparate information--such as calendaring, scheduling, and contact information--among multiple devices, especially three or more devices. For example, a user might have a PalmPilot ("Pilot") device, a REX.TM. device, and a desktop application (e.g., Starfish Sidekick running on a desktop computer). Currently, in order to have all three synchronized, the user must follow a multi-step process. For instance, the user might first synchronize data from the REX.TM. device to the desktop application, followed by synchronizing data from the desktop application to the Pilot device. The user is not yet done, however. The user must synchronize the Pilot back to the REX.TM. device, to complete the loop. Description of the design and operation of the REX.TM. device itself (available as Model REX-3, from Franklin Electronic Publishers of Burlington, N.J.) is provided in commonly-owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/905,463, filed Aug. 4, 1997, and entitled, User Interface Methodology for Microprocessor Device Having Limited User Input, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
Expectantly, the above point-to-point approach is disadvantageous. First, the approach requires user participation in multiple steps. This is not only time consuming but also error prone. Further, the user is required to purchase at least two products. Existing solutions today are tailored around a device-to-desktop PIM (Personal Information Manager) synchronization, with no product capable of supporting concurrent synchronization of three or more devices. Thus for a user having three or more devices, he or she must purchase two or more separate synchronization products. In essence, existing products to date only provide peer-to-peer synchronization between two points, such as between point A and point B. There is no product providing synchronization from, say, point A to point B to point C, all at the same time. Instead, the user is required to perform the synchronization manually by synchronizing point A to point B, followed by synchronizing point B to point C, then followed by point C back to point A, for completing the loop.
As a related disadvantage, existing systems adopt what is, in essence, an approach having a "hard-coded" link for performing synchronization for a given type of data. Suppose, for example, that a user desires to update his or her synchronization system for now accommodating the synchronization of e-mail data (e.g., Microsoft.RTM. Outlook e-mail). With existing synchronization products, the user cannot simply plug in a new driver or module for supporting this new data type. To the point, existing products today do not provide a generic framework into which data type-specific modules may plug into. As a result, these products are inflexible. In the event that the user encounters a new type of data for which synchronization is desired, he or she is required to update all or substantially all of the synchronization product. The user cannot simply plug in a driver or module for supporting synchronization of the new data type. All told, existing synchronization products today assume that users will only perform point-to-point (i.e., two device) synchronization, such as between a hand-held device and a desktop application running on a PC.
This assumption is far removed from reality, however. Users are more likely today to have data among multiple devices, such as among a desktop computer, a server computer (e.g., company network at the user's place of employment), and two or more portable devices (e.g., a laptop computer and a hand-held device). Given the substantial effort required to manually keep three or more devices synchronized, the benefits of synchronization largely remain unrealized for most computer and information application users today.
What is needed is a system providing methods which allows a user of information processing devices to synchronize user information, such as user-supplied contact lists, from one device to any number of other devices, including three or more devices concurrently. The present invention fulfills this and other needs.